To Build a Fire/Annotated Bibliography

• Bowen, James (Winter 1971). "Jack London's "To Build a Fire": Epistemology and the White Wilderness". Western American Literature. 5 (4): 287-289. The dog's survival in "To Build a Fire," symbolically reflects London's idea that man should, sometimes, rely on his intuition truths rather than his intellectual cognitive processes. He appears to suggest that animals live by instinct, individuals with low mental capacity fail, and human beings who use good judgment, balanced by emotional insights, overcome a harsh environment. He had a problem in that he lacked imagination. In the simple things in life, he was quick and vigilant, but only in these things, not in the significances. Rather than representing the victory of instinct over reason, London offers a third choice as a new perspective on human existence. In this case, it would be the old timer from Sulphur Creek.

• Pizer, Donald (April 2010). "Jack London's 'To Build a Fire': How Not to Read Naturalist Fiction". Johns Hopkins University Press. 34 (1): 218-227.

Mitchell's travels alone to prove his case that "To Build a Fire" communicates the naturalistic reason that man lives in a world that denies him the possibility to travel alone. It is mid-winter in the Arctic during a cold day, that the man is traveling alone. The storyteller is deciding on this choice because of his record of the setting and the idea of the man. The man didn't stress about the shortfall of the sun, since he realizes that it will return in a couple of days. However, we understand very quickly, the man has just a piece of shallow information on the Arctic. As he remains on the bank of the Yukon. He has almost not seen the outrageous danger presented by the cold. This is his first winter. Afterward, the man likewise knows the reality that the sun will return, that it is fifty degrees under nothing, yet he doesn't have the smartest idea about the significance of this reality that it predicts passing for any individual who makes himself defenseless against its capacity to kill.